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this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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Today I Learned
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It's pretty screwed up how the media made light of this lawsuit.
A lawsuit that ended in gross negligence, and the media shamed the lady involved for a decade.
And she only wanted to be reimbursed for the hospital bills...
My mom broke her tooth on a small stone in some cereal while all that was swirling around the collective consciousness. She wouldn't sue because she "didn't want to be like the McDonald's lady." The dentist wasn't even suggesting to sue for some kind of "pain and suffering" money, just literally the $1500 it cost to fix the tooth.
There's no evidence to suggest that they paid to spread disinformation, that would be massively illegal and open them up to way more lawsuits. Ragebait has just always been popular.
Soup!
This is ultimately why I hate capitalism.
These corporations spend tons more money fighting against stuff than they do paying it out. The woman wanted her hospital bills paid, that was it. Instead, they go to town spending so much money with the intent to misinform and spread propaganda than just paying it.
Many of these large employers do the same with unemployment cases and on-site work injuries. Spending more time and money doing fuck all than just paying it out like the greedy pigs they are.
This has little to do with capitalism, capitalism doesn't dictate that the more powerful smear the weaker into submission and autocracies around the world show that it doesn't need capitalism for the powerful to suppress the weak. This was a failure of the justice system. They could've ordered McDonalds to spend as much money as they spent on smearing the lady to fully admit guilt and apologize. It is the justice system that failed.
A lot of people around here say "capitalism" when they mean something more like "the Kali Yūga", "this fallen world, this vale of tears", "the age in which the Tao is lost", or "this age of muck and clay, in which we are lesser than our fathers of iron, who were lesser than their grandfathers of silver, who were lesser still than the ancients of gold."
The folks who speak this way, if you asked them, "Was there any wrongdoing in the world before the first stock certificate was issued?", would say "Of course there was!"
If you asked them, "Did pre-capitalist kings or judges ever favor the unjust over the just because the unjust gave them riches?", they would say "Yes, they did!"
If you asked them, "In ancient times, were there rich and well-fed tribes, and poor and starveling tribes, and did the richer tribes lord over the poorer ones?", they would say "Certainly."
Which all goes to show, at some level they do know they're not really talking about "capitalism" in the economic or historical sense. They're not talking about an economic structure or a stage of Marxist history. They're taking about wickedness, graft, injustice, abuse of power -- things which are much, much older than capitalism.
They're merely using their favorite snarl word instead of just saying "evil".
And why do we blame capitalism instead of generic “evil”?
Because capitalism is the system that actively promotes it and is in every facet of our lives.
It’s greed not evil.
Murdering a baby is evil, letting millions starve to death is business.
Okay, maybe you really do think kings and warlords were more virtuous than shareholders or CEOs. Alas, it was not that way. They were buttholes too. Buttholery is not controlled by the economic system of the day.
You seem to think that I wouldn’t also reject authoritarianism?
There is no system of governance or economy among humans that you wouldn't reject, if you reject every one in which wrongdoing takes place or people enrich themselves unjustly.
That's my point. "I reject capitalism because people can benefit themselves by doing injustice within it" is dopey, because that predicate is not unique to capitalism; in fact it's universal. In every system of the world, people can benefit themselves by doing injustice within that system.
Therefore, the person who reasons this way would reject any conditions under which they might find themselves living.
Whatever "reject" means here, I'm not entirely sure.
No, we oppose capitalism because it inherently ENCOURAGES people to benefit themselves by doing injustice. That's a crucial difference.
It's equally true that people can be violently bigoted against religious, racial and sexual minorities in every system, but only a few actively ENCOURAGE them to.
Capitalism opens an avenue for greed to be used for the benefit of the many, whereas any other form of resource distribution has no place for greed and as such no place for the greedy. At that point it becomes the same kind of discussion as the prohibition discussion. Do you ban it or do you allow and regulate it. Banning greed won't make it go away, it will only force it into hiding and to undermine the current system. Capitalism forces greed to the surface, at which point people can have a discussion about how much greed should be permitted.
Wow, that's some impressive horse shit! The very nature of greed means that it will always benefit the few over the many and the nature of capitalism is that greed is elevated to a virtue, inevitably hurting the many to serve the few rich and powerful.
First of all, that's false. Pretty much every centrist and right wing structure of government centers the individual and thus caters to the greed of the individual over the needs of the many.
Besides, if that was true, that would be a good thing! Being greedy isn't some inescapable natural urge that must be satisfied or you explode. Making space for the most base parts of human nature isn't good with cruelty, deceitfulness or (except in the ordered and consensual context of sports and even that is a bit iffy in many cases) violent tendencies, so why do you want to nurture and protect greed?
Sure, but just like the other vices I just mentioned, discouraging it and making it disadvantageous to act in a greedy manner will suppress and lessen its impact on society.
Yeah, that's the same thing people said about right wing extremists when Trump emboldened them and look how that turned out..
Bottom line is that capitalism directly encourages greed and in doing so indirectly encourages cruel indifference towards the lives, health and happiness of anyone who stand in the way of greedy people and corporations. This lawsuit is 100% a symptom of how capitalism hurts people.
It might not be a DIRECT result of capitalism, but guess what screwed up the "justice" system? Underregulated capitalism!
It's specifically designed to work for the rich and powerful and against everyone else, because that's who make the laws and keep the lawmakers in somehow legal bribes.
It's pretty scary how media can influence us so much, even when we think they aren't, and even when we think "only dumb people fall for it." No my friend, the majority fall for it. Not cause they're dumb, but because they've scienced the hell out of human nature and know precisely how to do it right under our noses. It started with marketing and advertising that works well, unfortunately. They've cracked the psyche code. Media adopted it. Big tech improved it. Gah... this is turning into a rant about capitalism; I didn't intend to go there. Eek.
Manufacturing consent is a good book on this topic.
We ALL fall for it, just not all the same things at the same time.
That's what's so insidious. I'm sat here thinking "you rubes, I read into the details right away, and knew something was off about the story". So then I have to ask myself, "ok, smartass, what are you falling for that you think you know".
Its just so damn insidious.
I'm just glad for her that almost no one knows her name. Can you imagine the doxxing and death threats she would be getting if this happened today?
Corporations gonna corporate
I even was thinking if that episode from Seinfeld not just a scheme pulled by McDonald's.